After fighting with DRI and my radeon for several weeks, I got it working but somehow hosed portage. So, time to reinstall.

I thought I would share this tip for anyone who might find themselves in this predicament.

I realized that wget is on the source CD and quickly set about writing a script that would go throuh the install steps (not the disk partitioning since thats already done, just rm -rf /* your screwed-up system before rebooting to start the install).

you can script everything after setting up your ethernet card.
chroot'ing should be the last line.
upload it to your home page or whatever for safe keeping.

the second script is everything afer the chroot up to the point of setting up grub. Thats how far I went anyways, because the rest is easy after that.

Yout could probably backup some things like modules.autoload too, to keep from editing by hand. Just wget em (add it to your scripts even)

So the install ends up like this:
boot cd and hit enter 3 billion times (lol)
insert the module for your network card
setup network card
wget http://your.homepage.com/script1.sh
(i had to chmod +x mine after wgeting it)
then do ./script1.sh
a few seconds later, you get bash prompt.
wget http://your.homepage.com/script2.sh
(possibly chmod +x it)
./script2.sh
Fire up Urban Terror Mod on your other machine and start fraggin! (Shamless plug: Urban Terror rocks. You dont need quake3 to play, just install the latest update for quake3, get the urban terror files and read the forum about making the link to start it....)
Setup grub and finish the install

You may end up rm -rf /*ing a few times to get your scripts setup, but as long as the install process stays the same, and you can keep your scripts on a server for safe keeping, you should be able to quickly recover when The Worst happens.

You may even want a post install script to emerge your favorite stuff once you have your base install done.

Thanks to the gentoo team for including wget

Now, if we can talk em into adding the option to run autoexpect at the begining of the install and save the results to floppy (for brand new installations), the whole process would be even easier